It's Monday Morning

So today I am taking a break from the traveling. It seems that is all we have done since we arrived as a group. Anyway, this will be a great time to catch up on what I have been doing since the rest of the team went home. Glad they arrived home safely.

Let me start by why I'm here. Without going into why it has happened or the politics of everything around here, things are as I have found them. There is nothing we can do about the past, but learn from it. What I saw when I arrived at the schools literally tore my heart in two. I found that after I arrived home from the first trip, part of my heart was left here. What we are doing here is incredible and amazing. The kids we saw a year ago are healthier and happier today. When we arrive they call us by name. We see the now tattered shirts that say WCC somewhere on them or the Tuttle Tigers or any of a number of things on them that relate back to Oklahoma. They have become tattered now from almost, if not, daily use. I hate to imagine what they would be wearing if they didn't have those on.

The thing that really bothers me though is when I look beyond the kids and see the men of these villages sitting idly by. Occasionally they will wonder onto the school grounds with their palms turned up and ask "What about me?". So I had to ask myself, "What about them?". Are we creating a youth that will simply grow up asking the same thing? I'm no psychologist or sociologist, but what I see is a bunch of men who have lost their pride. They have lost their ability to support their families. In a place that requires four cows as a dowry, they can't get married. The young women aren't getting married. So what happens is that many kids are born out of wedlock, HIV is still spreading rapidly, and the men that are married are abusive to their wives. They simply have lost their manhood.

So what about them? I have done my own research and have learned that a good wage in these villages is about Three Thousand Ugandan Shillings a day. The converts into roughly U.S. One Dollar and Twenty-Six Cents. Literally, $13,104.00 would employ 40 people for a year. Now some, you would have to pay more. Just like anywhere you need supervisors to make sure that the work is being done. Its not about just giving them money.

Here's the good news. Sunday we visited all three villages and were able to put into place three supervisors. They will start hiring people today. We will have a total of about forty-five workers by the end of the week. They will start by cleaning up the grounds around two of three Carepoints that we just had built. Construction is still ongoing, so only two of them are ready for this phase of work. We want to make these Carepoints a beautification point of the Villages. At the third school, Ngariam Corner, we will start by clearing a field behind the school to create two football (soccer to us in the States) fields.

It may not sound like much, but to the men in the Villages it is work. It is the beginning of getting their self worth back.

So the next time a man comes to me and says "What about me?", we can simply say "Here is a job!"

God is so good!

Please keep praying for me and the work that is being done here.

With Love,

Tom